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The New Economics Foundation claims to have found a way to measure the true worth of different jobs to society.  They claim that £1 invested in high-quality residential care for children generates a social return of between £4 and £6.10 whilst £1 invested in alternative, non-prison based sentencing for women offenders generates a social return of £14. Cleaners are worth more to society than bankers, whilst tax accountants destroy more value than anyone else- £47 destroyed for every £1 created. (more…)

The head of the Girls Schools Association is warning private girls’ schools that there is an unprecedented amount of pressure on their students to become both a perfect mother and a career woman.  She is said to encourage girls to appreciate that it is alright to work part time or not at all when raising children. (more…)

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development have reported that the number of firms planning to make people redundant has fallen and that the situation in the jobs market, although still severe, is better than it was a year ago. This doesn’t mean that we have turned a corner, but things do seem to be looking up. (more…)

It looks as if Lord Mandelson has fallen into the same trap that has held the British economy back for so long. In an attempt to make higher education more directly relevant to the economic well-being of the nation he has come up with a series of proposals that risk creating an effect wholly opposite to that which he intended. (more…)

In the film The Wrestler Mickey Rourke plays an ageing fighter who is forced by ill health to give up his career. However fighting is more than his career, it is his life and in the end, despite the obvious dangers he feels he has no choice other than to return to it. For Mickey Rourke his career is far more than just a job. It defines him. It is his identity. He is what he does. (more…)

A senior woman in the City caused a stir last week in a Parliamentary committee by saying that a years’ maternity leave for new mothers was too long. It seems that the debates over flexible working and parental rights have a long way to run. (more…)

Sometimes amazing things happen to us, for reasons we don’t understand. We put them down to luck, or chance. Whilst things can, and do, happen by luck or chance, more frequently outstanding things happen to us because we make them happen, even though we don’t realise it. (more…)

The news this weekend that Gordon Brown’s eyesight may have been further damaged raises some important questions. Both about our attitude as a society to disability, and about the effectiveness of disability legislation in general. (more…)

“Now is the Winter of Our Discontent”. The opening words of Shakespeare’s Richard III were used to describe the profound industrial unrest that took place in 1978-9 Schools and airports closed for lack of workers, and ambulance drivers struck,. For several months the country was riven by strikes. Rubbish piled high in the street. Thousands of petrol stations were closed. Schools and airports closed for lack of workers, and ambulance drivers struck, grave diggers in Liverpool downed tools. (more…)

The nature of our future working lives is becoming an increasingly important debate in modern society; changes to the way we work and how we manage our careers are likely to be defining characteristics of the 21^st century. But there are two, distinct pressures on the future of work and it is not at all clear which is going to win out. (more…)